Itching to Scratch!

It's everywhere around me these days - every elementary and middle schooler at Aditi, where I spend a day every week, is itching (pun most certainly intended) to create a fun project on Scratch - the exciting new programming environment that has emerged from MIT Media Lab (and can be downloaded for free). I have blogged about Scratch here before, and of course am a huge fan of the tool myself, so it's great to see the current buzz on Scratch these days.

I had the pleasure of watching some grade 4 students yesterday proudly present their "Stories of Invertebrates" created in Scratch as part of a Science unit. I offered them some useful suggestions to help them make their stories even better, and also suggested to the teacher to create a class account on the Scratch community website and upload those wonderful creations there. The kids are excited at the thought of uploading their projects - a great incentive to polish up their stories and add titles and credits (one of the suggestions I made to them).

My 11-year old son just finished creating a quiz in Scratch (for 1st-3rd graders) on an Indian Panchatantra Classic (which he has also made into a movie using iMovie, to be shown to the kids before the quiz) in honor of the upcoming International School Library Day that will be celebrated at his school on Monday, Oct. 22.

I recently discovered a community of "Scratchers" on Facebook as well, discussing new Scratch ideas and sharing notes on how to engage kids with this new technology tool that has such tremendous potential in any learning context.

I have had the pleasure of knowing and meeting many of the people at the Media Lab who are working on this project. The great news for us educators in India is that this environment, which currently supports some European languages in addition to English, will soon be available in Indian languages as well. I have actually been helping to build and test a beta Hindi language Scratch environment. It's such a kick!

Anyway, back to BLC07 (see previous post) - I was surfing YouTube and found a sweet little movie uploaded by Ewan Macintosh, from the Scratch preconference workshop at the MIT Media Lab during the Building Learning Communities conference in July this year.

So here's Scratch and Playing a "Banana Phone" for your viewing pleasure...

The Lifelong Kindergartner

I have, on several occasions over the last few years, interacted with Mitch Resnick of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab. I finally had the opportunity of seeing him in his element on a larger stage (literally) at the November Learning conference where he delivered the keynote address this morning. The audience loved his demos of the PICO cricket kit and Scratch. His enthusiasm is/was catchy. His group is christened "Lifelong Kindergarten" at MIT Media Lab - and I don't think there can be a better proponent than Mitch of the "spirit of kindergarten" - learning through imagining, creating, playing, sharing - that his group is attempting to bring to learners of all ages (5-99) through their creations and products.

Mitch shared the philosophy of learning that drives the work of the Lifelong Kindergarten group - a philosophy that is so evident in the Mindstorms kits, the PICO Cricket kits, and now Scratch as well.

As Alan November remarked at the closing session of Day2 - this framework of learning could well drive all teaching across all grades in schools. An idea well worth mulling over...The devil, as always, will be in the implementation, I suppose!

Scratch officially released by MIT Media Lab

[Also posted on educatorslog.in]

You may recall my earlier post here - Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas about kids and programming. I'd mentioned Scratch - a great programming environment for kids of all ages to get creative with computers that was due to be released by MIT Media Lab. Well it's here! Fun, easy, colorful, wysiwyg, lots of features, great online community for sharing your projects.

Check out this MIT press release as well as links to Mitch Resnick's videos about the product that are linked from the site and go ahead and download this free, fantastic product...

---------------------Mailer from Mitch Resnick announcing Scratch-------------------------

New software from Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab

As you may know, our research group at the MIT Media Lab has been
working for several years on a new programming language, called
Scratch, that enables kids to create their own interactive stories,
games, music, and animations.

This week, we are officially releasing Scratch and launching the
Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu), where people can share
their Scratch creations with one another.

Scratch builds on our group's previous work that led to the LEGO
MINDSTORMS and PicoCricket robotics kits. Just as the MINDSTORMS and
PicoCricket kits allow kids to program and control physical
creations, Scratch lets them program and control media-rich creations
on the screen. As kids create and share Scratch projects, they learn
important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a
deeper understanding of the process of design.

I hope you'll go to the Scratch website at http://scratch.mit.edu,
where you can download Scratch software and share projects created
with Scratch.

I look forward to hearing about your experiences with Scratch. If you
have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me.

Mitch Resnick
Professor of Learning Research
Lifelong Kindergarten group
MIT Media Lab